Endangered
Janitzio
Chirostoma estor
The town is known for the butterfly fishermen who are skilled at lowering their butterfly-shaped nets to catch "pescado blanco", a species of freshwater silverside endemic to the lake that is important to the local cuisine.
The silverside
Janitzio, also called Pike Silverside, is a silverside in the family Atherinopsidae (order Atheriniformes) — Chirostoma estor.
Range and habitat
Isla de Janitzio (Spanish pronunciation: ) is the largest of five islands in Lake Pátzcuaro in the state of Michoacán, Mexico. The town of Janitzio, that means "maize flower" in Purépecha, is located atop a hill on the island. The boats take approximately 25 minutes to reach the island.
The island is the subject of Silvestre Revueltas's 1933 composition Janitzio.
GBIF currently lists 120 occurrence points. Those points follow where people logged the taxon — museum drawers and surveys included — not a closed range boundary.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Habits
Silversides and rainbowfishes need clear water and a place to school. A lake form does not commute to the next basin.
In crisis
Janitzio is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Janitzio, Wikidata item Q5532744 and GBIF occurrence geography. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
